One of the steps that can be included in the settings of a Procurement Process is an Assessment.

There are two existing types of Assessments in-system that can be configured: an Initial Assessment and a Value/Risk Assessment. The initial assessment will need to be completed first and, depending on the results, can then force the user to also complete the value/risk assessment.

The intended purpose of the Initial Assessment is for the user to answer a range of questions to determine if their procurement is deemed low or high-risk. If deemed high-risk then they will be prompted to also complete a Value/Risk Assessment.

For both assessments, System Administrators can configure various settings including the structure of the questions, pre-defined answers and scores against each question. This is done from the 'General' section of the module settings, which can be accessed by following the below steps:

1. Navigate to the Procurement Planning module, either via the app launcher icon in the menubar or through the navigation tile on your Homepage.

2. Click on the Manage Module tab in the top right to open the module settings.

3. On the General tab, scroll down to the bottom of the page and under Questionnaires, click on either the Manage Initial Assessment or Manage Value Risk Assessment button.

Managing an Assessment

When managing an assessment there are two tabs: 

• Summary: Define instructions for the assessment and notification preferences.
• Build: Define your questions, answers and output of the assessment.

When you are making any updates to your assessments, please ensure to click on the Save button in the top corner before closing or navigating away.

Summary settings

Questionnaire name: The 'Questionnaire name' is not customisable, it will always be set to either 'Initial Assessment' or 'Value Risk Assessment'.

Instructions: You can use the textbox provided to include instructions for the user completing the assessment. Here you can define the purpose of the assessment and how they should complete it. If you choose to include instructions then they will appear at the top of the page when they complete the assessment questionnaire.

Notifications: You have two options for setting up notifications and you can choose to use one of them, both of them or neither of them by selecting the options you want to use from the dropdown menu. The two options are:

1. You can enable an email to be sent to the user completing the assessment once they complete it.
2. You can enable a specific user/email address or users/email addresses to be notified when anyone completes the assessment.

Build settings

There are various settings and options when building your assessment and the questionnaire.

Firstly, you can select to enable a textbox against each question for the user to add comments along with their answer.

Question Categories

You can select [1] (refer to the below image) to enable the use of categories for your questions so you can group them by common threads.

• If enabled, you can then define the names of your categories in the table provided [2].
• You can select [3] to sort the questions in the assessment by the categories.
• You can also select [4] to show results per category in a bar graph once the user completes the questionnaire.

When you are adding and editing your categories, it's important to hit the Save button in the top corner. Once saved, you'll have the option to select these categories against your questions (see below).

Questions

There are a variety of different settings and options that you can select when setting up your questions.

By default, VendorPanel provides a list of questions for both assessments. These can used as they are, you can make amendments to the existing questions and add your own or you could delete all and start fresh.

In the table provided [1] (see the below image), you will see the list of configured questions and will note the following:

• Question text
• If it's a mandatory question or not
• The 'answer type' (e.g. Yes/No, Dropdown list of options, free text field, etc)
• The minimum score and maximum score that a user can get for that question.

You can click on a question to manage it. You can also use the plus (+) button on the right to add a new question. Please see the Editing a Question section below for information on creating and managing your questions.

Instead of updating your questions one by one in-system, you can use the export/import functions [2] to make bulk changes. This will allow you to download either a template (with dummy data to guide you) or export your existing questions in an Excel document. You can then make your changes, save the document and import the sheet into the system with the button provided.

The table will by default show limited data and information about each question, however, you can use the Show all question data option [3] to extend the table to show all details and settings associated with each question.

If you want to delete all information and start fresh then you can use the Show delete all questions option [4] to display the button to achieve this. Please note that deleting all questions is an irrevisble action.

Scoring Type

The answers to your questions can have scores assigned to them that will calculate a total score at the end to determine the results of the assessment.

Under Scoring Type, you can determine how points are calculated using either the Basic (used for the initial assessment) or Dual Axis (used for the value/risk assessment) type:

• Basic: Points are simply accumulated from all questions to a single overall score. This is a very traditional style for tests.

• Dual Axis: Points are accumulated into two separate totals. Each question needs to be associated with a single axis. Since the results are on the 2-axis an output is that the score can be represented on the chart.

If using Dual Axis then you'll see an additional section and table asking you to define your names for each axis. When you're managing a question you will then select one of the options defined here to associate it with. 

Editing a question

When you select to edit a question you will be able to define the following:

1. If you've selected to use categories and have defined your options, you can select which category the question is assigned to [1] (see the image below).
2. Define the question [2].
3. Select the way the user can answer the questions from the below answer type options [3]:
   • Dropdown: You can build a list of different options that the user can select from a dropdown menu
   • Tabstrip: You can define multiple options that will display in the strip that the user can select
   • Yes / No: This looks the same as a tab strip, but will only include two options for 'Yes' and 'No'
   • Date: The user must select a date from a calendar picker
   • Single-line free-text: Provides a single-line textbox in which the user can type an answer in
   • Multi-line free-text: Provides a multi-line textbox in which the user can type an answer in
   • Number: Provide a textbox where the user must enter an answer using numerical characters only
   • Range: You can define a lower and upper number limit to build a range (e.g. 0 to 5) where the user can select one of the options
   • Image upload: Requires the user to upload an image file as their answer.
4. You can select to include guidance documents [4] with the question, which allows you to upload a document. The user will be able to download this file when viewing and answering the question.
5. You can also allow the user to upload a document [5] as part of their answer to the question.
6. You can define whether this is a mandatory question [6] or not.
7. If your assessment's scoring type is dual axis, then you can select which pre-defined axis [7] this question is associated with.
8. If you have selected to use an answer type that includes multiple options (e.g. Dropdown, Tabstrip, Yes / No, Range) then you will need to define the options [8] here and the score value [9] associated with each answer to help determine the results of the questionnaire and advised approach.
9. You can choose to delete a question [10]. This is an irreversible option.

Result Definitions

How you define results will first depend on which scoring type you've selected and if you've applied scores to your question options. Based on the answers a user gives in their questionnaire, a score will be calculated for them and then converted into a percentage.

If using the Basic scoring type (this is selected on the initial assessment by default) you will just define your different results and the score percentage ranges associated with those results.

This is where you define what score percentage prompts the user to complete a Value/Risk Assessment. See our default results definitions below:

If using the Dual Axis scoring type (this is selected on the value/risk assessment by default) you will need to define results that factor scores for both axes. Your questions would have been assigned to one of your two axes, so a percentage score would be calculated for both. See our default results definition below:

You can also enable the option to plot the results from the dual-axis assessment into a Four Quadrant Chart with the option provided. You'll be asked to specify the names of the four quadrants and these should line up with your result name definitions in the table above.

Click on the Show chart preview option to see how the graph will be displayed and use the fields provided to adjust the value and risk scores to see how the chart will output.